Paramount joins the AR fray with Transformers app

Using Apple’s new ARKit technology and developed by Viacom's VR division, Paramount's first augmented reality app lets users control the actions of popular Autobot Bumblebee overlaid in real physical spaces.

To coincide with the release of Transformers: The Last Knight on 4K Ultra HD, Paramount Home Media Distribution has launched Cade’s Junkyard AR Experience, a free iOS augmented reality app developed by Viacom’s VR division, Viacom NEXT.

Free to download from the App Store until February 20, 2018, the experience was created using Apple’s new ARKit technology, which launched in September on iOS 11. ARKit gives millions of iPhone and iPad users the ability to place digital 3D projections in real physical spaces.

In Cade’s Junkyard AR Experience, users can control the actions of popular Autobot Bumblebee in a digitally overlaid setting designed as the virtual junkyard of Transformers: The Last Knight protagonist Cade Yeager. Users can direct Bumblebee while hitting, blowing up and interacting with various objects, which can be added to expand the experience.

With a focus on VR, Viacom NEXT currently makes room-scale interactive music experiences, narrative worlds, games, and explores live-action capture techniques across its core brands including Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon. It also shares insights with Nickelodeon’s new Entertainment Lab, a Burbank-based research and development facility led by the former creative director of Nickelodeon Animation Lab, Chris Young.

Paramount’s first AR app follows the release Transformers: The Last Knight 360 Experience, an app from L.A.-based VR/AR company Holor that features exclusive behind-the-scenes 360-degree video footage of the film.

The Transformers world also expanded into the mixed-reality content space this past summer with the first Transformers-themed AR and VR center located in Shanghai. The project is the first of multiple centers to open in China as part of deal between Hasbro and California-based media company DMG Entertainment.

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About The Author

Jeremy is the Features Editor of Kidscreen specializing in the content production, broadcasting and distribution aspects of the global children's entertainment industry.
Contact Jeremy at jdickson@brunico.com.